Big cast, big visual effects, big ending: Stranger Things’ final season rumoured to cost $626m

LOS ANGELES – Often praised for its movie-like cinematography and storytelling, Stranger Things will blur the line between film and television even more in its final season, which has several feature-length episodes and a production budget to match.

And that is because American creators Matt and Ross Duffer have always thought of their science-fiction horror hit as “a giant movie”, they tell The Straits Times.

The much-anticipated fifth season of the series – Netflix’s most-watched show of all time, going by hours viewed – will be released in three volumes, with the first four episodes debuting on Nov 26, the next three on Dec 25 and the two-hour finale on Dec 31.

The latter will also play in more than 350 cinemas across North America on New Year’s Eve.

Stranger Things premiered in 2016 and became an instant cultural phenomenon – the story of a small Indiana town where a young boy’s mysterious disappearance leads to the discovery of a monster-filled parallel dimension known as the Upside Down and covert government experiments.

Created as a love letter to the 1970s and 1980s – and the heyday of American horror author Stephen King and American sci-fi director Steven Spielberg – it sparked a wave of nostalgia for that era and films such as E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982), Close Encounters Of The Third Kind (1977) and Jaws (1975).

In a Zoom interview, Matt says he cannot reveal exact budget numbers for the show or comment on a recent report by Hollywood industry newsletter Puck News claiming this season’s eight episodes cost US$50 million (S$65 million) to US$60 million each.

That would mean a total budget of up to US$480 million, making it one of the most expensive television seasons ever, and eclipsing the US$356 million budget of superhero blockbuster Avengers: Endgame (2019).

As for why these episodes were so costly to produce, he says: “It was a big season – we have a really big cast, we have over 6,000 visual effects shots and it’s on the longer side for a show.

“We’ve been very lucky that the show has continued to be successful and Netflix has been incredibly supportive in helping us realise our vision and tell the story how we’ve wanted to tell it.”

The streamer also let him and his twin brother – who write, direct and produce – indulge their cinematic leanings.

“We actually never really learnt how to write television – we studied film, and that’s most of what we watched,” Matt explains.

“We initially pitched it as like a long-lost Stephen King novel that Spielberg found, dusted off and made into a giant movie. So, we think of each season as kind of a long-form movie.”

Ross says the 41-year-old duo have since learnt to love TV.

When the Duffer brothers worked on their first show, writing and producing episodes of the 2015 sci-fi mystery Wayward Pines, “it was very rigid – you had to have it down to the second and write in advertisement breaks, and it can stifle you a bit creatively”.

But Stranger Things demonstrates “there is flexibility in this new era of streaming”, with previous seasons’ episodes as short as 38 minutes and as long as 2½ hours.

“So, it really runs the gamut and it allows for story to take the lead,” he says.

The question is whether fans will be happy with how Stranger Things ends, as long-running hit series – the fantasy smash Game Of Thrones (2011 to 2019) and supernatural thriller Lost (2004 to 2010) among them – show how hard it is to stick the landing.

Matt says he and his brother have “made peace with the fact that you cannot please everybody”.

“It was stressing us out for a while. Then we got in the room with the writers, whom we trust deeply, and we stopped thinking about what people might want and just wrote what feels good to us.

“And we came up with an ending everyone in that room felt very excited about. We’re very proud of it, and we know the actors are all really happy with how their character journeys ended.

“That was a huge huge relief – and, hopefully, the audience agrees with the actors,” he says.

For many in the show’s cast, this final season also marks the end of a 10-year chapter of their lives, particularly for the young actors who play Will (Noah Schnapp), the boy who goes missing in Season 1; his friends Mike (Finn Wolfhard), Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin) and Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo); and their telekinetic friend Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown).

They were 11 to 14 years old – and virtually unknown – when they began filming Stranger Things, and as young adults now, it is a little surreal rewatching themselves in those early episodes.

Says Wolfhard, a 22-year-old Canadian who also starred in the It horror flicks (2017 and 2019) and Ghostbusters comedies (2021 and 2024): “It’s funny – I feel like we have the same reaction as other people have when they watch the show, which is realising, like, ‘Oh my god, they really have grown up.’

“And then you’re, like, ‘Oh, ‘they’ is us.’”

It was bittersweet saying goodbye on set and filming the last scenes.

Asked if any of them got emotional, McLaughlin, 24, says: “Everyone dealt with their emotions differently, but if we’re talking about who cried the most, it was definitely Noah.”

There was also a sense of pride in the work they had all done, the American actor adds.

“For the cast and crew who’ve been there since Season 1, it’s just so much hard work – sweat and tears and long nights – that the moment of it finally ending was like a graduation.

“It was a wonderful experience and I was grateful for it all,” McLaughlin says.